Our current climate has thrown a lot at people. Before COVID hit most of us were already operating at 100%, after we have continued to onboard more responsibilities and yet we don’t have more time. This is creating stress, lack of effectiveness and in some cases beating ourselves and not finding good ways to deal with what has been going on.
If we were running an obstacle course, we would train for what we knew about the course. We would find the right drills, get on a good diet for our level of activity, train our mind and bodies to handle the strain we would put on it. There is a known problem that we are working to overcome that we would continually adjust to make sure that we took in feedback about our training program to improve our performance along the way. If one day the course changed and suddenly we had to swim and do some downhill skiing we would change how we trained and approached our training. If we got an injury or had to carry extra weight we would think about how we approached strength training and our race strategy. How can we do this with our work?
In our work environments, we set up all sorts of ways to allow us to achieve our goals. I’ve found an incredible amount of value in looking at how things have changed around myself and understanding how to set myself up better for the road ahead.
The first critical thing to get right is how you organize the things that you see as what needs to get done. For decades now I’ve used variants of the GTD system. I found my old system not working well for me as there are now new responsibilities, less time and fewer options in what I can do in some of that time. If you are finding yourself in a similar situation, I would recommend looking at how you are organizing your system. I went through a mind mapping exercise to capture what my current world looks like so I could redo how I capture and organize work to make sure I can focus on the right priorities. Getting your foundation setup to support what you are trying to do is critical if you want to be able to focus on the right priorities. What are the new responsibilities you have onboarded? What is your schedule really like? What needs to move? What could you stop doing? What could you do more of?
A second critical leg for me in creating the space I need is to invest in my mindfulness practice. I strongly recommend finding the best way to create space for yourself which isn’t “productive”. This could be going on a walk, meditating, praying or whatever restorative practice works for you. I have used the Waking Up app for the last few years and have found it to suit my preferences very well. I also recommend Calm which has a little different feel to it. The key here is to give yourself space to connect with yourself and your experience.
Many of the challenges we are dealing with are external challenges. Something to ask yourself is “Do you have what you need in this moment”. Challenges like fires, pandemic, child care, social change are all real of course, but they manifest themselves in the large. I’ve found it incredibly helpful to breathe, make space in the moment and pay attention to how they really impact your moment to moment experience.
The third leg for me is to be kind to myself. There are a lot of “should”s in many of our lives and acknowledging that the world has changed and our ability to continue to perform at the same level may not hold is an important part to acknowledge. It helps to be kind to yourself when you find that you can’t perform in the same way you were prior to many of the current challenges. What each of us is dealing with is a big shift from where we were so why would we be able to operate in the same way that you did before? Give yourself a break. :)
The final leg is to take a vacation. Give yourself time even if you aren’t going to Hawaii or Europe. Create space to breathe, have some fun and take care of yourself, mentally, physically and spiritually. Many people I’ve spoken with still aren’t taking time and are finding themselves almost entirely sapped of energy and say they would just sit at home anyway. Don’t discount creating time for yourself and give yourself space to live outside of all of the additional responsibilities you have taken on.